


save what has been lost, fix what has been broken

by honeygyu (honeybeomgyu)



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Red String of Fate, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25350217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybeomgyu/pseuds/honeygyu
Summary: For as long as he could remember, Taehyun had always wanted to find his soulmate.So of course when his string broke, he was devastated.
Relationships: Huening Kai/Kang Taehyun
Comments: 4
Kudos: 67





	save what has been lost, fix what has been broken

For as long as he could remember, Taehyun had always wanted to find his soulmate. 

The thought of finding someone, of  _ having _ someone who was meant for him, and no one else. To be destined to meet someone. He’d spent countless nights dreaming of what his soulmate would look like. Was it a boy? A girl? Were they Korean, like him? Would he have to learn a new language just to talk to them? He would do it, if he needed to. 

Whoever it would be, Taehyun had fallen in love with them long before he'd even known what love was. Countless nights spent gazing up at the stars, eyes shining and head spinning with fantasies as he touched the red string around his finger, just... _ thinking _ . 

So of course when his string broke, he was devastated.

  
  


It had started as a dream. Literally. Taehyun normally slept peacefully, not retaining his dreams or even having tangible ones. This time, though…

This time was different. 

Taehyun  _ felt _ awake. He was standing in a blank room, no walls or ceiling. Just...nothingness. Beneath his feet, a mirror. Though, maybe not. When Taehyun took a step, he found that it rippled, like walking through a puddle. 

His red string -- which normally hung low, but not so much that he wasn't able to function -- was now pulled taut, leading forward to a destination he couldn't see. A tug in the direction it got Taehyun to start walking, using the string as a guide. 

He walked, unsure of how far he needed to go or how long it would take to walk to where he would end up. But, with every tug, he began to feel frantic. Was he going to meet his soulmate? Why now? What was  _ happening _ ?

His train of thought cut off as his vision flashed. Nothing specific he could hear or see, a blurry view of ceiling lights, someone yelling, someone asking  _ do you know where you are? _

Taehyun yelled out as every part of his body flashed with pain, sending him jolting forward and falling to his knees. He couldn't pinpoint where it hurt, if it came from inside or outside or both. The feeling took his breath and filled his eyes with tears. 

And then, just like that, it was gone. Taehyun stood on shaky legs, trying to catch his breath. When he opened his eyes, he saw that where he was had changed. 

He was no longer only standing on a floor, with no boundaries in any of the other directions. Now, he was in a room of doors. Different doors, yes, but the one he currently stood in front of looked like the front door of a house. Taehyun took in his surroundings, noting that the floor carpeting looked a bit like a hotel. 

The doors each beckoned to him, whispers of memories calling him and pulling him towards them. He turned towards the door directly in front of him, and reached for the knob. 

Almost instantaneously, his hand started burning. He pulled it back, instead standing on his toes to reach the peephole and peek through to see what was in the room. 

It was seeing someone else’s memories, through his own eyes. Two girls playing with a toy car, then turning to him (or rather, whoever’s memories these were) and saying something. He was  _ happy _ , and reached out his little hands to grasp at the cars. 

Taehyun watched as the memory stopped and stuttered, flicking to a much more grim vision. A wet street, someone calling out his name -- not Taehyun's, but a  _ Kai _ . Must be the person who these memories belonged to. 

In the memory, someone screamed. Someone called for him to  _ look out! _ and then...nothing. Then, pain. 

The ground began to rumble, and Taehyun pulled his face away from the door in time to see the floor beginning to crumble and fall away. He ran in the other direction, finally looking fully ahead to see a grand door at the end of the hallway. 

Pulses of pain jolted through his body. It took everything he had not to fall to the ground, to keep sprinting to the door at the end of the hall. With every step he took, it felt like he was being ripped in two. 

He reached the steps leading to the door, reached out his hand. Everything around him seemed to stop, a breath of air, a gentle whisper flitting past his ear. 

Taehyun felt a searing pain tear through his body. Beneath him, the floor fell, taking him with it. He was falling, falling, falling, until...

He awoke screaming, sobbing. It felt like something was  _ missing _ . Something was wrong, deep inside. The door to his bedroom opened, his mother and father rushing to his side. 

“Taehyun…” His mother said. She took his hand -- his left one, where his string was tied around his middle finger -- and held it up so he could see. 

The string, formerly red and flowy, had changed. It was black, dead. Taehyun pulled it a bit and saw it was  _ severed _ , the end of it sawed off. A new pain erupted inside him, no longer physical. 

He began to sob again, bawling into his blanket. His mother held his hand and patted his back. His father was on the phone, calling the doctor to see if there was anything he could do. But Taehyun knew -- all of them knew -- that there was nothing that could be done. 

His soulmate, the one he'd dreamt of for so long, was gone. 

* * *

Two weeks. 

Two weeks had passed since Taehyun had woken up in the middle of the night, screaming his lungs out because of pain. Two weeks had passed since he had been rushed to the hospital, since he had been told that his soulmate wasn't  _ dead _ but rather, had severed the connection to save their own life. Two weeks since Taehyun had begun feeling empty. Two weeks since he’d lost his soulmate. 

Taehyun still teared up anytime he thought of it. The feeling of something being ripped from him was still fresh on his mind. He'd been able to wrap his broken, dead string around his finger, securing it with a ring. But just the knowledge of what was hidden beneath…

It hurt. More than he could even register now, after the fact. 

Now, he was going back to school. He hadn't spoken much since it happened. His friends all went to different schools (they lived  _ just barely _ far enough that they couldn't go to school with him), and he’d told them. But still...it was difficult to be this alone. 

And now he would be alone forever. 

_ Stop. Stop thinking like that _ , Taehyun berated himself. He was sitting in the back of class, head down to avoid locking eyes with anyone. The teacher came in, talking. Her voice was nothing but static to Taehyun, he drowned her out and stared at his desk instead. 

“Do you see his finger? Look, his soulmate  _ died _ ,” 

Taehyun's head snapped up, looking for the source of the voice. It was a girl two rows in front of him, speaking none too quietly to her friend beside her. For a moment, Taehyun was worried his ring had slipped off. Then he saw the boy standing at the front of the room. 

The first thing Taehyun noticed about him was that he was cute. The second, that he was pretty. The third was the familiar sadness plaguing his gaze, his movements...everything. His eyes snapped to the boy’s left middle finger. Sure enough, the string was black and limp. Much like his own. 

The teacher introduced him as Kai, a transfer student from some other school that Taehyun didn't care to listen to the name of. He didn't even realize he was staring until Kai locked eyes with him. 

Taehyun stood quickly when he felt the pain hit. He struggled not to double over as he left the room hastily, interrupting his teacher saying he needed to pee. 

She looked confused. “Oh, um. Be quick.” She said, then let him go. 

Almost as soon as Taehyun had exited the room, he felt better. He took a walk, up and down the hallway, until his breathing was steady and his hands stopped shaking.  _ What was that? _ He asked himself. 

When he returned to the classroom, he went back to averting his gaze. Throughout the entire class, he could feel wherever Kai was. Whether he was sitting a certain way, or stretching. Taehyun spent the class keenly aware of everything Kai did. 

It was  _ annoying _ . Why couldn't he just sit on his own? Why couldn't he try and mourn the loss of his other half without some random boy making him hyperaware of all this? Stupid. Unfair. 

When Taehyun had first found out what happened -- that his soulmate had willingly severed the tie between them -- he had been angry. Upset that the person he had held in such high regard would just...throw him away. He want angry anymore. It was a choice between living alone or not living at all, and who was Taehyun to criticize the decisions of someone on the verge of death? 

It did still hurt. Physically, if he messed with his string. But also, it hurt to think how his soulmate was taken from him. That no matter what they had chosen, Taehyun still wouldn't end up with them. He had always thought the universe was...kind, maybe? For giving him a soulmate. Now he knew it was cruel, for never giving him the chance to not have them taken away. 

As he'd been lost in his thoughts, Taehyun hadn't noticed his gaze wandering. Again, he locked eyes with Kai. And, again, he felt pain. He clenched his teeth and ignored it, also ignoring the sudden bright look that crossed Kai’s face. 

Class ended, finally, and Taehyun decided he couldn't take much more of this school day. He had lunch next, and it wasn't like he ate in the cafeteria anyway. Pushing out of the room, he made his way straight to the bathroom to call his mom. 

She picked up on the first ring.  _ “Hello?” _

“Hey, mom,” Taehyun greeted. “Um, can I come home?”

He heard her sigh.  _ “Taehyun, you promised you would try-” _

“I know, mom. And I did try. It's just- it still hurts, and I don't want to deal with it around them. Can you please just pick me up?”

_ “It's my first day back since it happened. I'm sorry, but I can't leave right now. Make it through the rest of this day, and when I get home we can see about having you stay home tomorrow. Sound good?” _

“But mom-”

_ “Oh, sorry honey. I've got to go. Love you!” _

The dial tone beeped in his ear, barely loud enough for him to hear over the roaring in his ears. 

Taehyun resisted the urge to throw his phone down. He resisted the urge to cry. Instead, he left the bathroom and went to the courtyard. 

He stared up at the clouds, watching them puff by. As a little kid, he used to stare at the shapes they made and hoping maybe one day he would get to watch them with his soulmate. 

Taehyun scoffed and looked at the ring on his hand. So much for that. 

Lunchtime wasn't nearly over, but Taehyun wasn't sure he could handle being with nothing but his thoughts any longer. He walked back into the building, brushing past the boy coming out. When their shoulders touched, Taehyun felt  _ electric _ . He looked up and saw it was Kai. 

_ Oh, not this again _ . He walked away as fast as he could to avoid the pain again. Taehyun’s next class was with a nice teacher, who would let kids sit in his classroom at lunch. 

He didn't go there, though. Instead, he went to one of the older classrooms mostly used for storage at the back of the school. He found an empty one, and sat beneath the dusty teachers desk. 

(Taehyun didn't even notice the day slip away as he fell asleep, relieved that he was dreamless.)

* * *

As soon as Taehyun was in the door, he was scolded. For skipping classes he didn't even mean to skip. Whatever. He took the harsh words and marched up to his room, falling to his bed and curling up with his pillow. 

Tears he didn't even know he had began to spill out, rolling down his cheeks and soaking his pillow. Maybe it was his mom yelling at him, or her not picking him up. Maybe it was the stress of finally going back to school, the stress of dodging questions of where he had been. 

Maybe it was that Kai boy, who brought him so much pain only seconds after meeting him. But probably, it was his soulmate. The one who didn't want him anymore. The one who  _ left _ him no matter what would have happened. 

He heard a knock on the door, and sniffles and wiped his eyes before calling, “Come in!”

His father came and sat beside him. “Your mother...she's only angry because she got a call from your school. Apparently you'll have detention tomorrow because of the classes you missed.”

“I can go.” Taehyun interjected. It was just more school, right? How bad could it be?

“But she wants to keep you here, since today was too much to handle.” At the last part, he looked at Taehyun with so much pity that for a moment, Taehyun thought he might barf. 

“I could handle it. I just don't wanna be grounded.” A white lie. A fib. 

His dad chuckled, “Well, I think I can get you out of being grounded, but I doubt your friends are going to be allowed to come over this weekend…”

Taehyun nodded frantically. “And I can still get my day off?” 

“Of course,”

Taehyun thanked him with a hug. He watched his dad leave the room and grabbed his phone to text his friends the bad news. 

That night, Taehyun slept early. He dreamed of a vaguely familiar face, talking to him. Hands holding his, lips kissing his. And then...it fell apart. 

He shot awake, tears soaking his cheeks and string throbbing around his finger. 

Rather than trying to fall back asleep, Taehyun pulled his papers from his backpack and started working on his homework. Catching himself up on two weeks of work would take him far longer than a day, but it sure made the time pass. 

Before long, it was light outside. He kissed his mom on the cheek goodbye and continued trying to make sense of his math homework. 

Taehyun took a break after a while, laying back on his bed and opening up his phone. He saw he'd been tagged in something by one of the kids at school and opened it up. 

It was a picture of Kai, the cute new boy, and the caption read  **_must suck to be severed. guess his soulmate didn't want him either_ **

Taehyun was  _ shocked _ . What kind of monster would make fun of someone's loss like that? He saw someone had tagged Kai in the photo, and clicked to his profile. 

Selfies -- some of which made Taehyun’s stomach flip dangerously -- and lots of them. Some were with his sisters, who looked very much like Kai. Taehyun couldn't help but feel he'd seen them somewhere before, but maybe it was just his imagination. 

He closed out of his phone, throwing it down beside him and turning to his book. He knew the kids at his school were assholes, that was why he hid his dead string beneath that dumb ring. But making fun of someone for not having a soulmate? For  _ losing _ their soulmate? Messed up, even beyond what Taehyun was used to. 

_ Maybe I should befriend Kai. I mean, he's like me, right? _ Taehyun felt a little better at the thought of not being alone in having his heart shattered by someone he'd never met. Having someone like him...it might help. 

Taehyun stood from his bed and stretched, popping his back before walking out of his room. He went to the kitchen, grabbing himself a cup of cereal and sitting at the window. For the first time in two weeks, Taehyun watched the clouds without feeling empty. 

* * *

Three weeks. 

Three weeks since Taehyun had decided to try and talk to Kai. Three weeks since he'd begun to ignore the pain that shot through his body when they made eye contact. Three weeks since he'd come to the conclusion that they could, technically, still be together, since they both didn't have soulmates. 

He wasn't entirely sure why, but he and Kai just seemed to click. It wasn't like how he was with his friends, and it wasn't how he had been told meeting a soulmate was. The two of them just...made sense. 

People this young didn't generally lose their soulmates. So finding someone in the same boat as his -- even the severed soulmate, not dead -- was rare. And, in a kind of messed up way, also rather lucky. 

Though...the pain was getting worse and worse. Taehyun couldn't even touch Kai anymore because of how badly it hurt. Sometimes just being in the same room was enough to cause a thrum beneath his skin, just enough to make him want to claw it out. 

Friday afternoon. Taehyun had gotten in trouble for texting in class, and was off to detention. Luckily, this time he didn't have to face his mother before he went. 

He sat at a desk, already pulling out his math homework to sit and do for the next two hours. Just as he was about to start, the door opened. 

“Oh my- Taehyun? You're here too?” 

It was Kai. Taehyun looked up and smiled, feeling his skin prickle. He looked off past Kai’s shoulder to avoid  _ too _ much pain. 

“Guess we’re both delinquents, hm?” Taehyun asked. He smiled, looking back down at his math work. The glint of his ring caught the corner of his eye. 

_ “You can show me, you know,”  _

_ Taehyun looked up at Kai, who was sat on his bed. Taehyun himself was laying out on the floor, drumming his fingers on his stomach.  _

_ “Show you what?”  _

_ Kai moved, next to him pointing to the ring covering the black string around Taehyun’s finger. “Oh…” Taehyun said. He slowly slipped it off, allowing the string to unravel.  _

_ Kai didn't say anything on the string, just smiled at him and said, “You don't have to hide that around me, Taehyunie~” _

Taehyun’s right hand twitched, about to take it off. He turned to the left, seeing Kai’s hand about to reach out for him. Their eyes met for a fleeting moment. 

Without warning, the string started  _ burning _ . He flung off the ring, tears filling his eyes. Pain erupted all over, and Taehyun could hear Kai rushing over, asking if he was okay. 

“Kai, Kai. Please, it hurts. It hurts, it hurts.” Taehyun fell from his seat, bracing himself against the wall beside him. “Don't- don't look. Please, Kai. It  _ hurts _ ,” 

Kai was touching him, brushing his shoulder and trying to wipe his tears. Everywhere Kai would touch, his fingers left the same burning pain as his dead, limp string. 

“ _ Stop _ ,” Taehyun sobbed. He could barely think. He couldn't get a word out, couldn't tell Kai about the pain. He started to double over -- probably would have fallen if he wasn't already sitting curled against the wall. 

Kai’s arms wrapped around him, pulling his tears face to his chest. Taehyun felt something new. He felt a his stomach flip and he felt a steady hum of  _ comfort _ begin beneath the pain. 

Taehyun looked up, pulling away to meet Kai’s gaze. The familiarity of his face, of the pictures on his Instagram, of  _ him _ , flashed through Taehyun’s mind. 

“Kai…” Taehyun was about to ask. He was ready to ask,  _ What happened to your soulmate? _ He was about to let the dots connect themselves and ask Kai...were they soulmates? 

Kai took Taehyun’s hand -- left hand in left hand -- and suddenly all the pain was  _ warmth _ . It felt like taking a breath of air after being underwater for so long. It was stretching after sitting for a long time, it was opening your eyes to the gentle light of the sun filtering through your blinds. It was comfort, it was happiness, it was…

“Soulmates,” Kai breathed. Taehyun looked down at their joined hands to see a glittery red string connecting them. His eyes once again filled with tears, happy this time. 

“Soulmates.” Taehyun looked at Kai, a moment before pulling him in and connecting their lips. 

His first kiss was just as magical as he had dreamt for so long. It was gentle and soft, but also so,  _ so _ much more than he would ever be able to think up words to describe. 

They pulled apart, and Kai rested his forehead on Taehyun’s. 

“I thought I lost you,” Taehyun whispered. He held Kai close, spoke quietly, afraid to shatter the fragile moment they'd created around them. 

Kai shook his head, pressing a kiss to the tip of Taehyun’s nose. “I'm never letting go of you again.”

  
  



End file.
